


Shade

by thenthekneehits



Series: Tiny Tumblr Drabbles [5]
Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Childhood, Friendship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 02:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4810616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenthekneehits/pseuds/thenthekneehits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a prompt I received for <a href="http://thenthekneehits.tumblr.com/post/123312521721/send-a-number-or-2-and-a-pairing-and-ill-try">this post</a>:</p>
<p> <em>20. breaking the rules + 25. sunlight</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Shade

It was the hottest May in North Carolina in years. “Ever!” Link would say. He’d be wrong, but the sentiment remained.

Link had a friend called Rhett. (“Best friend!”) Rhett was tall, which came in handy when walking in the heat; Link tried his best to stay inside the other boy’s shadow. It mostly just cooled his legs, but he thought it worked great — especially when he was barefoot.

One morning the two boys walked to school instead of taking the bus. Something had happened to the school bus because of the heat, so it couldn’t come. Something in it burst or broke or blew up, Link wasn’t completely clear on it.

Well, they didn’t actually walk _to school_.

“This is a one time chance, Link!”

Link’s mom was going to be mad.

Rhett steered straight off the road and into a field. Link moved behind him to shelter himself from the new direction of sunlight. When he walked so close to Rhett’s back that their hands occasionally brushed, and if he also slouched just a little, the sun didn’t hit him at all.

“The cows?” he asked. He didn’t like not knowing where Rhett was going. He’d prefer to walk in front and lead the way, but the boy’s shadow cooled his reddening skin too pleasantly.

“Nah!”

Link pouted but didn’t want to annoy his friend with another question. His step father had told him off for asking too many questions the day before, so he was still very conscious of it. He was likely to forget it within the week, though, like little boys do.

Or perhaps within 84 seconds. “Where are we going?” he asked from behind Rhett’s shoulder, leaning his head a little, up to the point where some rays hit his right eye.

“Wanna show you a tree I found. It’s the best.”

“You climbed it?”

“Nah, wan'ed to wait till you see it.” Actually Rhett felt a little bit scared when he was alone in high places, but his somewhat dishonest words managed to make his oblivious friend feel happy and a little tingly with pride.

“Is there shadow?”

“ _Shade_. Yep. Lots of leaves.”

“You’re like a tree,” Link stated a couple dozen feet farther. “So tall and shady.”

“I think shady means something else. Dad called that guy from the cornerstore shady.”

Link had forgotten shady meant that too, but he did feel that he knew what it meant. “It means like something that’s gonna do something bad, and so you are shady. You skipped school.” He was approximately right.

“We’re both shady,” Rhett said, turning his head show off his grin to the boy behind his shoulder. His face looked red and a little shiny, and his hair looked exceptionally yellow with sunlight running through it. Link squinted his eyes at the brightness.

The tree was big. “It’s big,” Link marveled.

“Yeah, really big. Massive,” Rhett corrected.

Link emerged from his position at Rhett’s back and stood next to the boy, the sun lighting up both their hairs. “Really, really big. Enormous.” The word fit a little strangely into Link’s mouth, but he liked it. He knew he showed Rhett off with it.

Rhett molded himself onto Link’s back and rested heavily on the smaller boy. He delighted in how Link’s back instantly caved under him and folded the boy in half. “I’m dead,” he pronounced. “The heat was too much. I had a stroke. I’m dead.”

Link tried to get away from under his friend, but only managed a few steps before his knees buckled and they both fell to the ground in a heap.

“Ahh, shade. Thank you, shady friend,” Rhett praised when he noticed they were within the range of the tree’s branches. “But it’s not enough to make me alive. Gotta rest. I’m still dead.”

Rhett’s heat all over Link’s back should have felt suffocating in the already high temperature, but instead he began to feel an emotion he had never felt before. Despite his confusion as to what that emotion was, he felt so safe that he fell asleep and earned grass prints on his cheek.

They both got a whooping when they got home, Rhett with scratches on his knees from falling off the tree.

**Author's Note:**

> [the post on tumblr](http://thenthekneehits.tumblr.com/post/123372759431/numbers-20-and-25-rhink-of-course)


End file.
